


Cut Your Teeth On This

by Necroplantser



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Coming of Age, Cults, Cultural Differences, Gen, Loss of Identity, Not THE Vestige But A Vestige, Rating May Change, Self-Discovery, Temporary Character Death, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necroplantser/pseuds/Necroplantser
Summary: She lifts the mask and screams, "Where have you been? I wanna die, I wanna die, I am the willing." He says, "You're wrong, don't lie to me, I've picked you up to set you free, it's just your body I'm stealing."
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Varanis

**Author's Note:**

> A reupload of one of my earlier works, with some edits here and there and now I'm actually continuing it! Summary line is from "Strangers" by William Control. Updates roughly every week, personal schedule willing.

_ How many years? Ten? Twenty? ...Two? Oh, but… You were born at least twenty years ago when they took you. _

These things, she repeats to herself daily so that she may not forget them. The Daedra wants her to forget them. She stubbornly refuses, even as they slip from her grasp. The girl paces about her cell, scratches desperately at her arms, at her wrists as far beneath the manacles as she can manage, stomps on the hard ground to remind herself of its presence. Her cell mates, she herself, are long past the point of caring what she does. No one has told her to stop yet. It's been years, not a one of them has aged, and they are somehow all so much older.

_ Deshaan. You remember! The marsh, remember the marsh, remember the passing Argonians, the freebeasts and the slaves, their transporters, the repulsive ignorant traders devoured by the Ghost Snake. The womer always left, didn't they? They didn't press upon finding there was no male in charge. They did their business and left. _

She rubs at hollowed eyes. Yawns. Screams. Hers mix with others’, their moans and cries and ragged breath, the clang of iron, the heavy bootsteps of Dremora. The metal jewelry adorning her earlobes and forehead have remained despite the thievery of her clothing and its scratchy replacement. For this, at least, she is grateful.

_ Your mother was a good womer, an honest one. A huntress? What was it she did… her name! Her name. Se… Sevuuli. Sevuuli Surharian, an outsider, ousted, Velothi by blood but certainly no Mabrigash or Vereansu. The ancestors, the Ghost Snake, the tribe took her in.  _

A middle-aged Cyrodiilic man breaks down into laughing sobs for no obvious reason. Here, he doesn't need one. No one in the cell judges. An Orc woman joins him. They've been broken, or are in the speedy process.

_ Your name? Your name, my name, name… Edr… no? Adur--no, Edur--Adur? ‘She listens like she was named for it’, that was the joke, you made that joke! ‘Heria’. No, -heri. Adurheri. That sounds right. _

Adurheri swears she can see a fight break out in the distance. She swears it and then swears again that she's hallucinating again. There's a big woman, a very big -- ‘hulking’ is the word -- human woman, and a figure she can't quite make out. 

They disappear.

_ Adurheri, you keep your eyes on that now, you hear? When it comes back, get your eyes back on it. _

Moments later, the roar of metal doors giving and Caitiff on damage control nearly deafen her. The way out is clear -- in her head, not in reality. It must be to her acquaintances still in their right mind, for two out of the ten of them bolt for the open door, for the handful of others weaving through the fight or taking up arms against their captors.

Adurheri strives to be the former. Something in her cries out that it's suicide, or just delaying eternal captivity and servitude under Molag Bal, but the risk is worth the reward in her mind. She tails on the fastest one, an Argonian with a spiky head and face, so much taller than her. He looks strong of spirit, with a liveliness she couldn't find in her fellows before.

He notices. Just as a would-be escapee is dragged shrieking and clawing back to their cell, she is dragged into a pitch-dark alcove. When they return to the light, she can't read his face, but he doesn't rebuke her for continuing to follow him. 

Door after door -- he's broken his chains, his hands are free enough for a weapon as hers are but they haven't had the chance. They make it, barely, into a room that stinks of rot and death; the source -- a giant mass of flesh and skeletons unnaturally merged -- lies still on the floor. The strange person has leapt through a shimmering portal with a different, hooded man; the big woman has remained behind, bound to the portal by some profane magic Adurheri cannot identify.

She sees them both, but doesn't tell them to stop or turn back. Adurheri shouts what she assumes is a blessing in the tongue of the olive-skinned humans (they have come to the Vale enough) before she darts inside, the Argonian not far behind her.

The rush of wind whipping against her face, the drop, the water crashing hard on her body like a stone wall, all serve as the last thing she sees before warm lake water clouds her vision. Enough so, that she can see darkness creeping in, feel the air escape her, and briefly -- maybe? Oh, maybe -- some long arms grasping at her torso, clawed hands pulling her. Up? Down? It barely matters to her. It  _ was _ suicide, of course.

But the cultists already killed her. Stole her away, an unforeseen consequence for straying so far from the tribe. Drove a blade through her flesh and sacrificed her at the peak of that giant round stone.

So when she awakens, coughing and gasping, to find that Argonian standing over her, she laughs, hoarse and akin to the bark of a nix-hound. Drowning could not take her, and it was thanks to this stranger.

“ _ Thank you. _ ” The Argonian responds with something she does not know enough Marsh-speak to understand, but proximity and exposure has lent her so much as to thank him. Is he surprised that she can speak it? She can't tell, can't read his strange face.

Her head turns to the sky once more and she takes in the sun; a strange, alien feeling. It might have shone occasionally through the tree canopies and reflect off the swamp water, but Coldharbour had no sun.

Adurheri warms herself as the Argonian does. It takes the chill from her bonds and her bones, puts life back where Coldharbour took it from. The sparse grass around them prickles her hands when she touches it, the water stretches out around a little island in the center of the lake. She smells ash and smoke, that peculiar scent that the land takes during dry seasons, and in the distance, maybe food. A sharp, towered fortress looms far away, and a mer with their pack-guar appears to be approaching.

The Argonian has left. Fair enough to him, but to herself, she can't say.

On shaky knees, with shaky arms, she hauls herself to her feet and pats the water from her inner ear.

She calls out to the traveler, who still comes closer. “Hey, you!” Waving for his attention, and ultimately catching it, she yells in the closest to a House tongue she can get -- some Hlaalu dialect, she thinks, and it sounds much too short on her tongue, but the odds of them understanding are far better with it. “I'm lost! Where are we right now?”

_ You would trust this strange mer? The Argonian was safe, but -- oh please stop thinking to yourself, Adurheri, it'll only turn into you talking to yourself and people are going to think you’re crazy anyway if you tell them you just fell right out of Coldharbour! _

“You're just outside Kragenmoor, girl!” The mer shouts back. The voice is doubtlessly male. He hurries up his guar, approaches her, then eyes her wrists and body warily. Distrust in his eyes, in his long, bearded face, she can see it. She doesn't blame him one bit. She doesn't trust him either. “Where'd you get lost  _ from? _ I'm not helping out no convicts, I got a life of my own t’get back to.”

“I'm…” _Convict? He's glaring at your hands. That's like a prisoner, right?_ _That's… what I am?_ “I did nothing bad. I swear. I left my family for a walk and then people took me.”

He looks at her funny, one brow raised, mouth drawn. “Whaddaya mean, ‘people’?”

“I mean people,” she says, drawing a blank. “They were wearing strange clothes and came after me, and--” 

_ Cult. What's the word for that? Can't say they killed me, can I? _

His face swiftly changes, from a look of disdain and confusion to one of great concern. “Where'd they take you from?”

“Lower Deshaan.”  _ South. _ “Close to the Marsh.”

“Been talk of Dominion  _ n’wah _ in the fen,” the mer muses. “How you got outta there with your life, you'll have to tell me later. There's no room for newcomers in Kragenmoor, but I'll walk you up to the Temple if you like.”

Adurheri knows nothing of any Dominion, but she smiles, she nods, she walks alongside him and his guar. Iliath Temple, he tells her, is lovely. Big and sprawling, beautiful like a flower amongst the ash-plains of Stonefalls. She doesn't care for the Tribunal he talks about -- in her lifetime a few missionaries have visited her village, always eventually turned away -- but in the words of one cult she may find her answers about another.

Stonefalls, the region the mer calls Varanis, possesses a warmth drastically different from the wet heat of Lagomere. Dry, smoky, due largely to the presence of the volcano the locals call the Tormented Spire. The farther northwest they go, the rougher the air is on her lungs. 

“The name’s Savani,  _ sera. _ Ral Savani,” he tells her. A guar herder by trade. He knows a thing or two about the goings-on in this place; not much, but enough. Kragenmoor is a Dres-controlled city, she learns, and the name sparks a minor recognition -- they have far more presence further south. She’s seen some of them, skirting around the vale, coming in on occasion but not nearly so often as the Hlaalu.

Kragenmoor is disappearing behind them.  _ He's going out of his way to help... _

It occurs to Adurheri to inform Ral that she was  _ not _ taken by any Dominion, that the people who had kidnapped her wore no armor but robes, and bore no weapons but staves. It would be the right, truthful thing to do.

But Molag Bal cultists would cause far more of a stir than something people are already aware and wary of.

_ And, _ she reasons,  _ he wanted to help you better when he thought the Dominion was after you. Keep it up for your own good! _

She introduces herself; Adurheri Surharian of the Mabrigash, and Ral openly ponders the lengthiness of her introduction. “All you Ashlanders introduce yourselves like that, huh?”

At first, she's struck with confusion: his terms are odd, and this is the first time she's seen ash outside a fire, never mind lives in it. “What are you talking about, Ral?”

“I mean, is it like your version of a ‘House name, first name, last name’ greeting or--”

“No, no.” Before she continues, she adds, “Sorry I interrupted. Deshaan is a marsh,  _ sera, _ we are no ‘ash-landers’.” She can't control it; her face pulls into a grimace.

All he does is shrug. “That's what they are here,” he says. “Marshlander then?”

“I'd just like you to call me Adurheri, if that's okay.”

“Adurheri it is.” No sooner than Ral finishes speaking, the guar goes stiff and moans. He crouches down and strokes its head, muttering soft nonsense into its earholes, but whatever spooked it has done its job and done it well -- the guar bolts, its strong legs propelling it into the direction they were already headed in.

The two look behind themselves: Ral quickly, his ears perked high and distress in his wide-legged stance, and Adurheri, brief but alert, ready to flee as well.

_ Twang _ goes the bowstring.

  
_ Fwish _ goes the arrow, right between their heads.


	2. Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adurheri and Ral Savani have a rough encounter with one of the local tribes, and Adurheri makes an unsettling discovery.

Her gaze goes up the hill above them, in a perfectly straight line from the ground upward, and the sight of the armored archer crouching in the dry grass and nocking another, likely not-so-warning arrow puts the fear of death into her heart.

“Go!” she hisses at Ral. “Forget the guar, go back the other way--”

“But--” He looks back at the way his guar had fled. Animals, to their herders, are of great importance -- and Adurheri knows that, but another thing that she knows is that they've walked uninvited into Velothi territory (and these people, she supposes, are what Ral means by ‘Ashlanders’), and not every tribe is so outwardly benign as hers.

For example, this one. Whoever they are.

“Get--moving--!” She shoves the terrified mer back in the opposite direction, waving at their assailant, shouting apologies. “ _ Forgive us, we didn't know-- I was showing him back to his people, didn't realize you all were here-- we’ll be on our way! _ ”

There must have been a severe miscommunication, or she wasn't moving quickly enough, because while Ral has made it clear out of sight, and she makes a note and a point to seek him out later and apologize for the trouble, the second arrow lodges itself in her chest.

A sensation not unlike the near-drowning she experienced just that afternoon sweeps over her.  _ I'm dying, I'm dying, not even a day out of Oblivion and I'm dying-- _ She falls backward, thinking that she should be trying to get it out, maybe, but her body feels like it's losing shape anyway. 

Shape and color, though the world is still so bright.

The arrow falls out, no action on her part necessary.

The world turns fully grey, she feels her body dematerializing --  _ dematerializing? _ \-- to a certain point. Desperation kicks in. The overwhelming thought, out of  _ nowhere, _ that she's being pulled back into Oblivion by this process throws her spiraling into a panic.

She can't go back. She can't. 

She feels like she's screaming, but there is no sound. Her vision returns piece by piece, and her ability to stand along with it. 

Unnervingly enough, she's still semi-transparent.

The archer’s gone stiff, she notices. Some of their fellows join to see what the matter is, but are waved away, hurriedly, anxiously. She's afraid, too, but she looks up at them and just shrugs. The poor mer looks ready to drop dead as well, for as little as she can see of their face, and as solidity returns to her body, she watches them disappear into the distance.

A courage far better suited to an older body, or cockiness perfect for hers, overtakes Adurheri. “ _ Yeah! _ ” she shouts. “ _ You run away! Tell your people not to mess with Adurheri Surharian! _ ”

Her attention turns back to Ral, who is long gone, but that's okay. She knows her destination, she can find another way that doesn't go through this camp.

What must be Iliath Temple is close, it's in her sights. She keeps it there, as close as it can be to her -- the first real promise of safety in a long time. The faces of the cultists are fresh in her mind, as is her resolve to find answers, as she backtracks to find an alternate route.

As she walks, her bravery -- the adrenaline -- fades. The reality of what happened then sinks in in its place. She’d  _ died. _ There was a moment there, between the arrow hitting her chest and her body doing that… reformation, thing, where she was  _ very dead _ and at the same time… not. 

To think about it, it's exhilarating in a way. Terrifying, too. 

_ Am I still dead? It… it makes no sense. Can I not die? I was dead, I was… I have to still be dead! _

_ Then… _

_ What was I in Coldharbour? _

_ What am I now? _


	3. Wayshrine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After some disappointment at Iliath Temple, Adurheri makes her way to Kragenmoor.

She dies twice more before she gives up. Once, twice, from unlearned rock-scaling and slippery sweaty palms. The entryway to Iliath Temple is barricaded, furniture and wood slabs at any feasible entrance, no sign of anybody willing to take in an outsider. Adurheri stalks off into the distance in frustration. 

Wild guar grazing on a hill make way as she approaches, but not too far; just far enough so a perceived threat, though mostly unmoving in their direction, can't bother them. She doesn't blame them, by how angry she is, she must look or smell like danger.  _ Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths. Do not spook the guar. _

In Deshaan they are a rarer sight, and they look nothing like this: not as light-colored, smaller, with webbed toes instead of giant claws. She lays there and watches them amble about, making their noises, snuffling as they chew. They sound so different from the southern guar. Raspier. They, like the mer, inhale the ashy air and their voices change all the same. They don't bother with her now; it's like she'd never interrupted their grazing.  _ They don't care what's going on around them. They just live. I could learn a thing or two from them now… _

Quickly she snaps back to reality. There is no reason now for her to use this ability as an excuse to be unobservant, not when she has a mission -- however self-imposed -- to accomplish. No reason to be stupid and reckless. No reason…

Kragenmoor is still to the south.  _ Did Ral make it? _ she wonders. 

There is a way to find out, but his comment about there being no room for newcomers resonates in her with a sting. But a visit can’t hurt, and besides, it's a city. There should be someone there who can free her of the cuffs that followed her from Coldharbour. 

When she looks at them, they send shivers down her spine. 

One little guar gets curious and leans its big head down toward her, sniffing inquisitively with its tongue out. She lays still and allows it, glances up at its face, sighs contentedly. “Hello there, sweet boy,” she breathes, gently patting its snout. It snorts and huffs its grassy breath in her face. Is it a boy? Who knows; she hasn’t been learned in gendering animals, but this one has a much sharper snout than the bigger one it wandered off from, which must be the mother, if it’s still so young. Whatever it is, its long tongue lolls out of a massive mouth and drools on her cheek, laps her face, then sways its tail happily…

_ Laying here for a little while more won’t hurt, will it? _

She nudges the baby guar away and wipes the spittle off her face with the hem of her shirt. So many things have to be done once she reaches Kragenmoor, and now, finding some different clothes moves to the top of the list. Going around looking like a vagabond is one thing -- looking like she’s just come out of the jaws of some terrible creature, while not entirely untrue in the metaphorical sense, is another. She wonders briefly if she can just learn to make it all herself, or if housemer have a type of bartering system amongst themselves, and if she has something to give then maybe there will be something that fits her.

She has nothing to give. There lies the problem. A city has plenty of capable workers, sure enough, so not even her own two hands are offerable. 

She has three options, and she considers them all: 

Find work. No work? Then make it. Be somebody’s student or errand-runner --  _ or, _ says a more selfish part of her,  _ help someone overburdened with their work and maybe they will help you in turn.  _ She entertains both sides.

Learn. She is still young and has plenty of room for it, and if she could remember what it was that her mother did, she might have been learned in some kind of craft anyway, had she escaped her abductors… it will help her in the end, she knows, but she has one more option and the least honorable of the three to take into consideration.

‘Adurheri Surharian is no thief’ is not a concrete statement. Never in her life has she had reason to think about it, much less to actually want to act on it. It poses the most danger of her three options, showing the ugly threat of punishment -- which she knows nothing of in the way that the Housemer define it (which is also a mystery to her). Would they kill her? Leave her to learn her lesson or re-pilfer? The thought makes her sick.  _ It shouldn't have to come to that. _

_ Make it to Kragenmoor, _ she thinks.  _ Decide then. No reason to be stupid and reckless. _

The sun is beginning to set, spreading a slight chill over the area, and putting dread in Adurheri’s heart. She was so used to the sight of the sun, and so soon, it was gone.

It will come back.

She'll live.

Where she'll sleep tonight is another story. 

The sun has yet to rise, but still Adurheri wakes up. Finding the guar much too bothersome to fall asleep amongst, the night before she'd set off once more in the direction of the city, and after half the night, had passed out dead-tired on the stone steps of a well-looking structure. The blue glow drew her to it like a moth to flame, and so she had chosen that place to sleep, feeling safer than ever before.

The feeling has stayed with her through waking, and though she is alone in the dark, she knows by that feeling alone that this is a good place.

An ominous-looking ruin lies nearby. On her way southeast she chooses to bypass it, though not without thinking to come back and investigate later. Like the well, it draws her inward, but the temptation to go to it is far easier to resist. 

The darkness suddenly overwhelms her with daybreak nowhere in sight. She makes a break back towards the well, feeling watched by nothing that she can see. To be out in the dark like this… it's a mistake. It's a mistake. She clings to the blue-lit brazier, though she can no longer sleep, and watches the night.

A group of sleeping netch drift nearby. The rumbling snores of kagouti, peaceful for once, reverberate in the air and send a chill down her spine all the same as their snarls.

It will be a long night.

When she finally arrives in Kragenmoor, near evening the next day, it stifles her immediately. The way she had opted to come in must have been the wrong way; it stinks like the back end of a sick rat, mixed with something unbearably sweet and left to sit in the hot Stonefalls sun. Ral must have been sparing her an experience like this by advising her against coming here. Ragged-looking catfolk --  _ Khajiit _ , she thinks they are; she’s seen but one in her life and even then it was only in an illustrated book she once convinced a visitor to show her -- and some Argonians prowl about, some at rest in a sparse, hay-filled, open-walled building. Most of them wear a metal bracer not too dissimilar to what Adurheri is subconsciously rubbing beneath to get to her own wrists, to get feeling to flow back there.

Eye-contact with one of the Dres-slaves expertly avoided, she darts toward a stairwell…

...and directly into the solid breastplate of a city guard brandishing a polearm.

She stares up with a healthy mix of apprehension and fear into his piercing eyes, and backs up, swearing up and down the best she can that she didn't mean it, and was only searching for her friend. It really isn't as bad as it looks. She isn't as bad as she looks.

“What friend?” His tone leaves unfortunately ample room for guessing at whether or not he means to help her. 

“Ral Savani.” Knowing that it can't hurt her case to try, Adurheri launches into a fairly well-spun fabrication, the story Ral had assumed: she was a detainee of the Dominion. She tells him of their presence on the border of Shadowfen and Deshaan (there is no way she can know this to be true, but Ral’s words and his rumors lent credence to the assumption), how she'd escaped and ran north, too far north in trying to escape them fully. Ral had offered to take her to the Temple for shelter, but she'd found it to be barricaded, under siege, inaccessible and that's why she is here, you see? 

She slips in and out of Housespeak, which does not escape the guard nor his companion, and they are well taken aback by her news of the Temple, but eventually they do let her through with a warning:

“We’ll be watching you.”


	4. Guild

Ral proves himself tricky to find. Somehow, she manages to acquaint herself with half the city in her search for the guar shepherd. The odd group of men and women who introduce themselves as the Fighter’s Guild eye her with as much suspicion as anybody else, but they seem sympathetic to her case -- and friendly enough. The freecats Akethi and Zunala are curious to her, but she knows well enough not to ask why the Dres haven't taken them as well. It's plenty for her to assume that the Guild protects them.

Sore of all the looks thrown her way for the shackles around her wrists, she makes a deal with Akethi that she will join them in return for the cuffs’ breaking. Adurheri flinches when the hammer comes upon iron, hard enough to break it but with skill enough to stop there, and not break  _ through _ and hit her as well. The same goes for her ankles, all left sore and discolored from sunlight and lack thereof. 

The human, Baring, points out her newly freckled cheeks. Much to her surprise, they turn out to be all over her face -- nose, cheeks, ears alike. It's funny to him. She decides to embrace it; if the worst that awaits her in Stonefalls is a man’s humor when she has already seen hell, then let him laugh. He and the Khajiit girls are one in their advice to talk to Dyleso, the steward, to see about joining their ranks. Later, she promises; she'll do it later.

When she meets Ral again, it’s in the market, and he’s without his guar. She is still rubbing the ache out of her wrists, but stops to wave in his direction. Having caught his attention she grins rather lopsidedly as he makes his way over to her, and when he reaches out to shake her hand she politely denies, turning her palm to him. He nods, all smiles.

“Didn’t make it to the Temple, then?”

“Ah… hm. Well,” Adurheri starts, rubbing the back of her neck. “The Temple’s a bit…”  _ The word! The word!  _ “Not welcome to outsiders, you see. Not right now.” The confusion is obvious on his face and she waves her hand. “It’s blocked off.”

The confusion on Ral Savani’s face fades to understanding, and he nods again, though now he’s biting his lip and flexing his fingers. “Mm-hm. Well, that’s… a bit unsettling!” he concludes with a clap of his hands. “Good that’cha got here alright, though I’m not sure how to help you now…”

“Oh, no, I made friends,” she says. “With the Fighter’s Guild.”

“The  _ Fighter’s Guild? _ ” Ral laughs. “Sounds like an awfully Imperial venture for ya. I didn’t take you for the type!”

“They were kind enough…” She holds out her wrists. “And I did make a promise so they would help me in return.”

It takes a moment for Ral to respond; she stares him down with a withering look as he searches for the words, it seems, either polite dissent or agreement, and Adurheri can’t tell which she would prefer. She steps out of the way of a woman carrying a basket, and steps back into place when the woman is gone. Eventually he whistles, long and low, shaking his head. “Well,” he says, “ _ Sera, _ that was your first mistake, makin’ deals with the Imperials.” Adurheri stiffens, enough for him to notice. “They’ve taken in everyone’s culture from the west onward, comin’ for ours, coming for yours. Best to run back to your wise-women and tell ‘em the Dominion is after you.”

“That…”  _ is not an option. _ People saw her disappear. Her sisters, her friends, her mother, they all know she is dead by now. “I can’t.”

Luckily for her, Ral draws his own conclusions. “Don’t wanna bring the danger back home? All fair n’ good. But I’d steer clear of the Fighter’s Guild if I were you.”

“I’ll take it under… I’ll think about it.” Her distrust of Housemer versus her distrust of outsiders in general, and both are under siege. Briefly she wonders at where that Argonian had gone off to -- probably back to the Marsh, back home. She wishes, for a moment, that she had followed him. 

Adurheri says farewell to Ral Savani, and tries not to think too hard about the enslaved beastfolk on the other side of the city.


	5. Wrap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adurheri gets her bag. It's just not the bag she wants.

As it turns out, she  _ cannot _ not think too hard about them. As Adurheri wanders the city her thoughts wander to the run-down end, and grow bitter. How much better are these Dres, Temple-abiding countryfolk by the looks of Kragenmoor and the surrounding area, than the Daedra they claim to need no part of, than  _ Molag Bal _ , if they deign to keep intelligent creatures like animals? Her own experience prods at the back of her mind, the years at  _ least _ she spent imprisoned, in the raggedy cloth she still wears, that she can remember them wearing, and it burns inside her.

She is unfortunately aware of the looks she is getting from townsfolk, trying desperately not to murmur to herself and instead playing with her hair in increased agitation as she leans against a stand. She needs to go back to the Fighter’s Guild, see Baring about something to wear,  _ maybe _ talk to the steward whose name escapes her about joining up. What Ral had said about the Imperials is sticking with her, as much as she wants to make her own decisions.

The fury in her wants to make chaos for these Housemer.

Making a line for the dilapidated part of town that served as quarters for the beastfolk, Adurheri keeps an eye out for the guard who had made his threat to watch her -- the staff he carried was imposing and she does not know how to fight but if it comes to it, she can defend herself. She catches the eye of an Argonian woman, her scales dulled in places, who promptly looks away. Adurheri shakes her head and approaches, slipping into what she knows of marshspeak in the hopes that the woman will understand. Says she’s no Dres, she’s here to help.

The Argonian’s voice is quiet and raspy when, after an anxious pause, she tells Adurheri to wait. In moments she returns with something the size of her head, wrapped up in cloth that could pass for clean, in a handled sack.

“...I wanted to help you.”

“You are.” And the woman shoves her off in the other direction, looking away. Adurheri steps back and looks around before lifting the cloth to find a hard, cream-colored object… it looks, feels, like a sturdy little egg.

Her heart leaps up into her throat in fear. She is… far, far too young for this. Barely a woman herself, Adurheri hadn’t yet walked the Coiled Path, though she had been about to, nearly a week from it when she was kidnapped... how was she supposed to care for something not even her own species?

Footsteps thud behind her. She jumps, and turns around, clutching the egg close to her chest. 

A familiar voice asks, “What’s that you got there, girl?”

Dread settles in her chest as she recognizes the guard from earlier. She slips the handle of the burlap sack over her arm and looks him in the eye as best she can. “A gift,” she says, firm. 

“And would you mind me seeing it?” He knows. The grin on his face betrays what he knows: everything. Adurheri must have missed him on her cursory glance around. Both hands rest on his staff as he, for all she knows, prepares to arrest her or drive her out of town. 

She hikes the bag up to her shoulder and darts out to grab the staff as well, inciting a standing wrestling match between an untrained girl and a man of the law. She puts in a quick prayer to her ancestors as she drives her knee up between his legs, where she knows it will hurt if he isn’t armored there properly, and discovers with a shout of pain that he, in fact,  _ is. _ Her boldness startles him enough that his grip on the staff loosens and she is able to pry it out of his hands, and before he can yell for backup, Adurheri  _ bolts. _ For the town gates, that, if she runs fast and far enough, will have her escaping their jurisdiction.

And she does, eventually, stop. Doubled over and heaving breaths out and in, Adurheri ducks under an outcropping of land over the road and finds that no one is following her anymore. Deathless she may be, but this… Ancestors, this egg, isn’t. And it strikes her now how responsible she has made herself for it.

She hears padded steps approaching, accompanied by the  _ clack _ of something sharp on stone, and looks up as she clutches the bag to her chest, still catching her breath. Her voice comes out ragged and unbidden: “Hello?”

The voice that comes next is rough and like a hiss: “Hello again,” says the voice. The face that cranes downward to look at her gives her pause, then a wave of relief washes over her.

The Argonian man from Coldharbour and her actually share a language.

Adurheri later learns that the Argonian’s name is Wesa Ra, and that he had been scouting out an abandoned place of Molag Bal’s worship nearby when he saw her running, and the first thing she asks him is if he is going to turn her in to the Kragenmoor guard. He tells her no, and asks the question she hoped he wouldn’t -- what was in the bag? Biting her lip, she sets it gently on the grass and sheds the burlap sack and cloth wrap from it, and the  _ second _ she hears Wesa Ra inhale she is explaining at the fastest she can speak that no, she did not steal it, one of the Dres’ slaves gave it to her and she had to fight off a guard to get back here, and… and that is why she has this staff.

She realizes now that she still has the guard’s weapon.

It is hard for her to read the face of an Argonian, but the sound he makes reads as confused, at least. He holds his hands out while she runs out of breath again, and she stops talking. “You need to get it to a Hist,” he says. “Or it won’t grow up properly.”

“A… a what?”

Something like a smile plays on Wesa Ra’s face, and he wraps the egg back up, puts it back in the bag, and stands as he hands it to her. “I know where we can find one.”

“We…?”

“I am  _ not _ letting you go all that way alone. It’s all the way across Stonefalls, in Bal Foyen, and  _ you _ are unarmored and unarmed. Let me take you there.”

Adurheri slings the bag over her shoulder once again and takes his hand to stand up. “Thank you,  _ sera, _ ” she says, and dusts herself off. “Again, I mean. I never introduced myself correctly, last time… my name is Adurheri.”

Wesa Ra adjusts his armor and grins, all teeth. “It’s nice to meet you for real, Adurheri. Now, you and I have a job to do.”


	6. Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fine night spent drinking and playing cards with unlikely company.

They make it to Ebonheart just after sunset. The gates are open, Adurheri and Wesa Ra both stumble in, yawning one after the other in quick succession. Blearily they locate lodging and Adurheri asks no questions when Wesa Ra pays the innkeeper for a room. Though she does have them, such as, where did he get the money in such short order? Did Wesa Ra use his time more wisely than she had? Most likely. She doesn’t care to ask, though, and lets him half-carry her to the room with two small beds and place her bodily into one. As if on reflex she shuffles herself underneath the blanket and curls in on herself, casting the staff to the side and setting the egg in its bag on the pillow next to her.

When she dreams, she dreams of Coldharbour. The bleak hellscape, the oppressive atmosphere, the feeling that she was trying to run from something but couldn’t move fast enough, the grasp on her wrist, the horrible sensation on the back of her neck that haunted her through waking, suddenly, sweating, bolt upright in bed. 

It is still dark out, and when she looks over, Wesa Ra appears to be sleeping soundly. Adurheri wonders, for a moment, if he might be having the same dreams. If Coldharbour torments him even in the world of the living. If he will wake up in the same terror that she did. She lays back down, flips her pillow over, and goes back to sleep.

Or at least, she tries to. She glances at the mirror hanging above the room's single set of drawers and sees her own weary face reflected in it, shaded strangely by the darkness. Her slanted eyes, aquiline nose, soft-edged face and messy hair. Adurheri swings her legs off the bed and approaches the mirror, huffs at her own face and starts digging through the drawers to see if she can find anything to comb the rats' nest that had formed. There's nothing suitable, so she opts to use her fingers, yanking at tangles and gritting her teeth through the tough ones. Maybe one day she'll have it cut… she would have loved her mother to do it, she remembers her being brilliant with a pair of shears on cloth.

...that… that  _ was _ her mother, right?

She shakes her head. At this rate, the tangles are mostly gone and she looks less ragged than she had in Kragenmoor. It’ll have to do, even though she isn’t tired anymore, and cannot fathom going back to bed. 

So she leaves, making sure to pocket the key off the drawers, and slips out to the balcony overlooking the inside of the inn. There’s a couple Dunmer playing cards at a table by the fireplace, but it seems to be empty save for them and the innkeeper.

One looks up, a remarkably androgynous and narrow face framed by long black hair. Their eyes meet and they wave her downstairs, grinning. She goes, and pulls up a seat beside them, getting a better look at their friends. An older looking man in ornate robes, concentrating less on his cards and more on the face of the androgyne mer sitting across from him, and a large man with thinning hair and an unshaven face. Adurheri rests her chin on her palms and watches them play, the old man taking cards from the large man and putting down pairs on the table.

“Would you like a hand?” asks the one next to her, and Adurheri shakes her head. Their voice is hard to pin down, but they sound a little drunk. “Oh, that’s fine.” They lean in close, conspiratorially. “My husband is a terrible loser so we let him win.” With a giggle, they nudge Adurheri’s shoulder. “That’s him, his name’s Galien,” they point to the old man with a steadily diminishing hand of cards. “And Beren,” to the large man. “I’m Xiothus. And,” they continue, louder so the two men can hear them. “We’re all friends now.”

“Are we?” asks Galien. “I’ve never seen this girl in my life.”

“Yes, we are! Look at her, isn’t she gorgeous?”

“You’re not letting her talk,” says Beren. His voice is deep and ash-worn. “Let her introduce herself.”

“Oh, I am so sorry!” Xiothus lightly takes Adurheri by the shoulders and she hasn’t the heart to make them stop. “What’s your name, where’d you come from?”

Adurheri laughs, uncomfortable, and gently shrugs Xiothus off. “I’m Adurheri, I’m from Deshaan.”

“Oh,  _ Deshaan! _ ” Xiothus claps once. “Gorgeous place. We just got here from Mournhold, but these two are from Port Telvannis and I’m from Vivec.” Xiothus taps the corner of their mouth and pauses. “You have a  _ lovely _ accent, I’ve never heard it in Mournhold… whereabouts in Deshaan?”

“Xiothus, dear… why don’t you go and get us all another drink?” Galien says, his voice quiet but firm. “Give this poor girl a moment.”

“Brilliant idea!” Xiothus grins and slips out of their chair and over to the bar. Adurheri makes herself somewhat more comfortable at the table, sitting on her hands and looking between Galien and Beren, who continue to play. Galien gives her a kind, though withering look. It’s not to say that she is  _ uncomfortable _ around men, but these men are clearly well-off… and here she is in essentially a sack. She can’t shake the feeling of being watched, judged. Soon Xiothus comes back with their arms full and sets a bottle down in front of Adurheri. “Go ahead,” they say. “On us, you look like you could use it anyway.”

She takes a sip and immediately the alcohol burns her throat, making her sputter and choke. Beren reaches over and takes the bottle before she can drop it, and Xiothus giggles as they thump her lightly on the back. 

“I’ll give this back when you can handle it,” laughs Beren. Adurheri gives him a scowl but laughs along with him. “Or… here,” he says, handing her his glass bottle. “It’s wine, lighter than flin. And I’ll drink the rest of this.” He takes a swig of what used to be Adurheri’s drink for punctuation and shoots a pointed glare at Xiothus, whose dark eyes widen and mouth turns downward.

When she tries it, it’s bitter, but it doesn’t sting so she takes another sip and sets the bottle down to watch the men and Xiothus resume their card game. Only, Galien takes another look at her. Searching, it seems, for something. She draws in on herself and that’s when his eyes light up. “You look a mess, Adurheri.” She’s already pulled a face when he continues. “I won’t let you go around like that. I bought something for a boy of mine back in Mournhold, but I think I want you to have it.”

Adurheri won’t argue with a tipsy nobleman. She knows so much as to avoid that entirely. She watches as Galien rises from his seat and seems to glide across the floor and up the stairs, into the room across from hers and Wesa Ra’s. Beren crosses his arms and laughs as Galien disappears, then turns to her and Xiothus. “ _ Telvanni _ . You never know with those types.”

“Excuse me,” says Xiothus, putting up a front and giggling through it. “That’s my husband you’re talking about.”

  
“Which means you know what I mean even better!”

“Galien has his own… uhm, thing? I can’t find the word… it’s not a Telvanni Weird thing, Beren, it’s a Galien Weird thing.” And no sooner do they say it than Galien is coming back down the stairs, something garish and red tucked under his arm. He hands it to Adurheri and sits back down.

Unfolding it and standing to check its length, Adurheri finds herself with a lively-decorated red robe, the shining hulls of insects arranged in tidy spiral patterns down the front. They look solidly fastened, like she could wear this thing for a long time and have it still in good condition. She looks back over at Galien, who is  _ beaming. _

“It’ll look  _ wonderful _ on you. Go ahead, go upstairs and put it on. I want to see  _ somebody  _ wear it.”

Not one to look a guar in the mouth, Adurheri shuffles awkwardly back upstairs and shuts the door behind her. Wesa Ra is still sound asleep, snoring lightly while she undresses and shimmies into the robe after failing to find a fastener. It reaches just above her ankles, and the sleeves are somewhat loose, but she fastens the buckle of the belt stuck in the loops and it fits her waist perfectly. The high neckline reaches her chin, and when she looks at herself in the mirror she feels unrecognizable, though stylish. Her now-tousled-looking hair stands in contrast to the sleek neatness of the robe. She spins around in a circle and the length of it billows around her, and she deems it acceptable to show off to Galien.

“So, it fits,” Adurheri calls down from the balcony, descending the stairs carefully so she doesn’t trip. She sees Xiothus’ mouth fall agape and Galien clasp his hands together. “I think I like it very much,  _ sera, _ thank you.”

“Oh, if I could see you in a  _ hundred _ of those…” Galien muses. “If you would only come back to Tel Bosri with us.”

“I actually have to go to Bal Foyen tomorrow,” she says. “So I couldn’t…”

“But if you wanted to?”

“I still couldn’t.”

“Oh,” Xiothus says. “Why, then?”

Adurheri pauses -- the few sips of wine and flin she’d had are getting to her already. “I have to bring something important there. It’s… important to a friend of mine.” She wraps her arms around herself as the alcohol makes her begin to shake. “See, I was in Kragenmoor…”

And the three noblemer watch and listen as she tells the story of how an Argonian slave gave her an egg to bring to a Hist, and her new Argonian friend was going to accompany her to the nearest Hist in Bal Foyen. She leaves out the part where they’d met before, in Coldharbour, because that is just too much for her to explain right now. She sees Xiothus nod, Galien’s eyebrows turn up, and Beren give her a hard look. 

Galien starts, “I never did understand the Dres, or even the other Telvanni, keeping beastfolk. Ours are Bosmer, a few humans, and really just indentured at that.”

“They owe you?” Adurheri asks, sitting back down.

“Some of them owe my family quite a bit,” Galien says, then takes a deep drink of his liquor. Adurheri, in turn, takes to her wine. She’d always been too young for alcohol at home, and this being her first time wasn’t exactly the worst scenario she could think of. Three nice mer buying her one with no obvious need for anything in return. Maybe being so displaced isn’t so bad.


	7. Grown

In time Adurheri finds herself with cards in her hands, eyelids heavy, head swimming, laughing through the sunrise with the three mer. She hassles Xiothus for a match to her last card and slams the pair down on the table. It’s the fifth round of cards they have gone through that night, Adurheri’s third round of drinks, still under their tab as they have offered each time -- and her first win, which still feels incredible. Or maybe it’s the alcohol. 

Beren still has his wits about him, Galien is giggling with Xiothus about something they’d said in a farther eastern dialect than Adurheri can recognize. Adurheri feels her ear twitch at something she hears  _ after, _ footsteps coming from above. Heavy footsteps, clicking on the floorboards, and she realizes when she looks up that it’s Wesa Ra.

“Oh, isn’t  _ he _ a handsome one,” murmurs Galien, and Adurheri sees Xiothus scowl and kick him under the table, though she doesn’t see him react.

“Hello Wesa Ra!” says Adurheri, a little louder than perhaps Wesa Ra is expecting this early in the morning given the way he winces. 

“I don’t know what the problem is,” Adurheri mumbles later, the bright daylight sending a piercing shockwave through her skull. “They were friendly enough.”

Wesa Ra shakes his head. “People like  _ that _ will do awful things to people like  _ us _ , given half a chance. It’s good that you didn’t meet them sober. Next thing you know you would’ve been dragged off to some tower and forced to do their bidding, or… worse. How old are you?”   
  


“...Twenty?”

“Took you a second, there.”

“You know why.”

He reaches over and gives her shoulder an awkward little pat. “You got that egg from Kragenmoor, yeah?”   
  
Adurheri clutches the bag to her chest, strapped over her shoulder as it is, and nods. It’s going to be a long journey to Bal Foyen, and she’s having second thoughts about how she is supposed to keep it safe enough to actually make it to the Hist tree. People, guards, give her and Wesa Ra strange looks as they pass through, and she finds herself terrified that she will be recognized, however much she knows that guards are not a hivemind and Ebonheart is certainly not Kragenmoor.

“Telvanni are really no different from Dres,” Wesa Ra continues. “Except for who they abduct and sell off, really, Telvanni have no limits… if you’d been really unlucky, they would’ve thought, ‘oh, look, a poor girl with no obvious ties’ and just  _ taken _ you.” He’s gone stiff as he guides them both to a bench to sit. “Three of them? You wouldn’t stand a chance, especially drunk.” He says the last part with venom, like it was her fault for drinking with them in the first place… and she supposes it was. “Not that it’s your fault, you’re young.”

“Oh. How much older than me are you, anyway?”

“I think a year? But you’re young by elf standards. I’m a grown male,” he says. “You’ll live another couple hundred years, you have time.”

“I’ll live a long time, I think. I got killed just a few days ago.”

“Did you, now?”   
  


“Yes, I accidentally trespassed on Velothi territory and got an arrow for the trouble…” Adurheri sets the bag on her lap and rubs at her chest where the arrow had pierced her, feeling a phantom pain on bringing it up. “Where I’m from, we don’t do that.  _ We _ like them alive, you know?”

“You seem to do an awful lot of unwise things,” says Wesa Ra, grinning. His teeth are sharp, Adurheri notices, but all Argonians seem to have sharp teeth. “But I guess that’s just kids for you.”

She stiffens. “I’m not a child!” she says. “I’m a woman, I just haven’t… done anything to prove it. Not yet, but I will.”

Wesa Ra hums, and chuckles lightly at the end. 

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. I had a thought, but I’ve forgotten it already.”


End file.
